FRANKFURT — I bumped down in Frankfurt at 10:55 AM. A German landing, I thought — unsubtle and punctual.

The sky was clear, an un-German sky, and the colors that assailed me were pink (Deutsche Telekom), yellow (Lufthansa) and gray: cool colors at some remove from Caspar David Friedrich's ecstatic dusks in forests of Gothic gloom.

Friedrich's passionate romanticism is under control these days in a Germany that has become reassuring to the point of dullness. Europe's most powerful nation is electing its leader Sunday — and nobody really cares.